The one is like the soul in a large plant: We have here one of Plotinus’ more striking images. The comparison of individual human souls to maggots (eulai) in a rotten part of a plant might seem unduly derogatory, but Plotinus does not seem to mean it in that way; he is focusing rather on the individuality of the maggots within the larger whole of the plant. We have added “our” to “ensouled body” (29): it is fairly clear that this is what Plotinus means here, and elsewhere too empsykhon soma refers to the body to which the individual soul becomes attached, cf. e.g. III.6.12, 12-16; IV.7.85, 2-5. Our ensouled body, controlled by an individual soul, is contrasted with the superior body of the world, hence the comparison with the diseased portion which may be attacked by pests, as opposed to the “healthy” part of the plant, representing that part of the world which is not “colonized” by individual souls. Plotinus does not normally speak of the World Soul as having upper and lower sections, as he does in the case of the individual soul; he seems to do so here for the sake of his analogy.